A Murder at Alcott Manor

by Alyssa Richards

  “Well, well. You have been hiding a couple of secrets from me, Mister Mason,” Asher said. “First, big baby news. Next, crayons and paper.”

  Mason tucked the piece of glass inside of his watch band so Asher wouldn’t see it. When he’d directed the girls to the crayons and paper in the drawer, they had also found the broken pieces of glass he’d left there earlier in the night. In the real world, at least, and they had transferred over.

  For the last few minutes he had been using the glass to slice away at the ropes. He was sure it created a bloody mess, but Asher didn’t seem to notice.

  Asher leaned close to Mason’s face. “If you think you’re going to replace me and take over my family, you should know you’ve already lost out. You see, Layla will be back here in a little while and we’re going to be together again. Oh, and sorry that fatherhood won’t work out for you this time.” He clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “But I know Layla won’t give up her girls for the half-baked youngster that belongs to you. Bird in the hand and all that.”

  A shimmy of fear slid through Mason’s stomach. “I have to hand it to you, Asher. I never thought of extortion and kidnapping as a way to pull a family together. So creative. I guess it was your only option, though.”

  He never saw Asher’s fist heading toward him, but he did feel the sharp pain in his jaw and heard the loud crack when contact was made.

  Just before it all went black around him, he heard the girls’ screams, and he hoped he had done his job well enough. He hoped they were on their way home.

  34

  Mason lay asleep on the floor where Layla had left him. The cuts on his wrists were red and open and Layla smoothed ointment over them. She wrapped medical gauze around his wrists until the bleeding stopped and tried to pretend that everything was going to be okay. When his cheek swelled with a bruise, that feeling faded.

  She checked her sleeping girls for injuries and, finding none, breathed a grateful sigh of relief and covered them with blankets. Then she ran to the kitchen and filled a plastic bag with ice.

  She stared at the work table Mason had restored with his own hands. It was older than the one her girls were sitting at right now.

  So strange, this house.

  Somewhere close by, though not within easy reach, her girls sat at this table playing games with their dead father.

  Mason was there too, the father of her next and youngest child. Tiny flutters flickered deep inside and she pressed her hand against her abdomen.

  Had this been her first pregnancy she might have discounted that sensation almost entirely. But this was her third time to carry a child, so she knew this wasn’t some perfunctory reflex of the body. It was her baby, their baby. Stretching and reaching, maybe to let her know that it was there, the way children did when they wanted to connect with you.

  The memory of Asher came to mind in a startling flash, how he forced her to choose between the children he had given her and Mason’s child that grew beneath her heart.

  She propped the bag of ice next to Mason’s cheek and kissed the swollen area where she assumed Asher had punched him. She hoped his jaw wasn’t broken. Asher had a gift for hitting people in just the right spot to inflict the most damage. Her own jaw still clicked and popped where it hadn’t completely healed properly. He’d hit her particularly hard that time.

  She stood tall in spite of the disgust that dragged at the center of her and she kissed each daughter before she walked out of the room.

  She had seen movies about women who found a weapon in instances when they were attacked. They were knocked down or beaten up and miraculously found a pair of scissors or a knife to kill their attacker. But not Layla. When Asher had punched her in the jaw, she was just grateful that he hadn’t hit her near her stomach, because she had been pregnant with Emma at the time.

  Why hadn’t her anger motivated her to action when she needed it most?

  “It’s normal to lose your confidence in the face of this kind of bullying,” Dr. Waters had told her years ago. “The lucid dreaming and our discussions will build your confidence. I promise.” And it had. Until Alcott Manor intervened in her dreams and changed the course of her life.

  Layla walked out the kitchen door and across the majestic green yard. The same great lawn that her mother thought would make a fantastic overnight camping trip for the church youth group.

  “You’ll be on private property and right next to the beach! There’s nowhere else in Charleston where you could camp on the beach and be so safe at the same time!”

  Yes. So safe. So perfectly safe that that trip nearly ruined her life.

  She breathed in the warm salty air. Her mind’s eye held tight to its vision of the people she loved most in the world, unconscious in the Alcott Manor living room. If anyone were to walk in and see them, they would think they were dead. Soon they would be, unless she could think of something to help them.

  She needed a plan. What the hell that plan was, she didn’t know.

  What is real? What is true?

  Dixie’s words floated up to her like a gift.

  “The answer is always in the truth,” Dixie had said.

  “Okay.” She exhaled hard. “What is true?” She began a mental list of truths about the situation:

  One, Mason and the girls and Asher for that matter were in Alcott Manor’s dead zone. That meant a lot of vulnerability for everyone.

  Two, whatever happened in her dreams at Alcott Manor had an effect in the real world: Brooke died, Jordan was injured, Layla’s neck was bruised by Mason’s kisses, she got pregnant, and it seemed like she remembered Asher’s arm being burned from a vacation dream a long time ago.

  Three, anyone who died in her dream world would most likely die in real life. Whether that was true for Asher or not she didn’t know. Ghosts were already dead.

  Four, with a few exceptions, Asher was essentially the same person he had been in life—arrogant and power hungry and needing to believe that he controlled her. Since attacking him with all out force didn’t seem to be an option, she decided she needed to approach him more subtly. Make him think that she was under his control.

  Her heart pattered with adrenaline--and not the good kind that motivated you. This was the kind that made you feel sick, made you panic, and made you think the end was near. In life he had a way of dominating her, saying or doing just the right thing that made her feel small and powerless. This time she would overcome that.

  Hope.

  Don’t get your hopes up! her mother’s voice echoed in her mind.

  Make me a tea, would you, Lay?

  She spied the various rose bushes, some varieties with rose hips in bloom and she had an idea: tea. She would start with tea. That would send the message that she was the old Layla he knew and used. His wife who wasn’t a threat. The one who was on his side no matter what.

  She picked rose hip blooms, rose petals, hibiscus, and several flowers. She gathered different blooms from this garden than she would have from her former garden, though her practice tonight was not unfamiliar. As she always had, she placed the petals for Asher’s tea in the left hem of her blouse that she turned into a makeshift basket. The flowers for her girls, she separated to the right.

  There was lavender and chamomile around the yard somewhere, she had smelled their soft scent the other day. Lavender did best in full sun, but chamomile needed some shade, so maybe they were among the herbs that were closer to the back porch. She searched along the darker shadows when she heard a knock on the back door.

  “Mason!”

  Layla looked to the back porch and her heart twisted with fury.

  “Mason! Are you in there?” Jordan banged hard on the back door.

  Damn it.

  She couldn’t have Jordan walking into the manor and finding Mason and the girls unconscious and non-responsive. Layla looked around for some place to put the tea ingredients she had gathered and decided to press her blouse to her stomach.

  Jordan ba
nged on the door in the middle of the night as if she were on a rescue mission, as if Mason couldn’t do without her, and as if she were the most important person in his life.

  “What do you want, Jordan?” Layla’s tone was angry and fierce. Her mama bear side put its best foot forward to protect her children from this intruder.

  Jordan jumped away from the door, not at all expecting a call from the shadowy lawn. “Oh my God, you scared me. What are you doing out here?”

  “I own this house. What are you doing here?”

  Jordan smoothed her blonde hair and pressed her hand against her chest as she gathered her composure. But Layla thought that she was scheming, taking a minute to reorganize her plan because she had expected someone to answer the door. She hadn’t thought Layla would approach her from the back yard.

  “I’m looking for Mason, I think something’s wrong. Is he here?”

  Layla’s heart tripped on its own rhythm. “Why would you say that?”

  “Because he hasn’t returned my calls or texts and that’s unusual,” she said it like the spoiled brat she was, with a strong air of empty entitlement. She swayed just slightly before she caught her balance and tried to act as though that hadn’t happened. Her eyes were glassy and her reflexes were cushioned by whatever she had been drinking.

  “Maybe he doesn’t want to talk to you.” She hoped Jordan would be offended at her comment. She hoped she would huff and threaten to tell Mason and just walk away. Instead, her focus hardened into a laser and Jordan stepped toward her.

  “Let me tell you something, Layla. Whatever you think you have going on with Mason, it’s a temporary thing. Just like your new figure, it will pass. What we had wasn’t casual, it meant something.”

  Layla’s stomach lurched at the mental image of the two of them together. For a moment, she felt like the overweight girl in high school again, discounted and ignored. She checked her watch. One hour to go. “It’s the middle of the night and you shouldn’t be here. It’s time for you to leave.”

  “Mason’s truck is out front, so I know he’s here. I’m not leaving until I get to see him.”

  “I have children inside. You’ve been drinking. You’re not going in. So you can leave on your own or I’ll call the police and have you removed.” Layla wondered where the cop was that should have been patrolling the property. Police attendance had been spotty in the evenings.

  “You know, there’s something wrong about you, wrong about this house. I don’t know how you got away with it all those years ago, but I know you’re the one who attacked Brooke. You’re the reason she died and I fell.” Jordan drove her finger into Layla’s chest and she batted it away.

  This was so close to what had happened in high school. This was how it started. Brooke threatening her with those damn pictures. Next morning, Brooke was carried off in an ambulance. “Go home, Jordan. For your own safety.”

  “I heard you talking with Mason’s mother. All about dreams and Asher still being around. You’re a weird one, Layla, and I think you can do things. Bad things. I wouldn’t be surprised if you’ve done something to Mason in there. Maybe you have him tied up because you want him all to yourself. Are you doing to him what you did to me? I would guess that’s the only way you could get someone like Mason to stay with you. Maybe I’ll be the one who calls the police.”

  “Whose side do you think the police will take when they find a drunk and aging beauty queen on my property?”

  “You…jealous bitch.”

  “That’s right, Jordan. I am a bitch and if you don’t want to get hurt again, then maybe you should get the hell away from here. Far away.”

  “You’re nothing but a jealous little pissant. Always have been. I’m not leaving until I get to see that Mason is okay and unharmed. Send him out or I’m going in.”

  Layla thought of the police barging into the manor and finding Mason and her girls unconscious, especially with Mason’s bloody wrists and bruised face. They would think Jordan was right, that Layla had done something to them.

  “He’s asleep. In my family home. How do you think he’s going to react to you when I wake him up to tell him you’re out here on some sort of a drunken tirade?”

  Jordan’s head jerked slightly, involuntarily and the idea seemed to hit home with her. Maybe Mason wouldn’t like that.

  “You’re up to something. I can feel it and I am afraid for his safety. That’s reason enough to call the police.”

  Layla stood strong and resolute at the back door. She would tackle her if she had to, though she didn’t want to. That would be incredibly hard to explain to the cops and damn it, she didn’t have time for this!

  “Leave. Now. I’m not waking him up.” That last part was true. She didn’t know how it worked if someone woke you up from the bodily side of things. It might be okay. But what if he was protecting her girls and she took him away from that?

  “You freak.” Jordan shook her head and looked at her phone screen. “I’m giving you one hour and if I don’t see him in good health by then, I’m calling the cops.”

  Layla didn’t say a word.

  Then Jordan said, “I’ll be waiting out front in my car.”

  35

  “Are you okay, Mr. Mason?” one of the girls whispered.

  He awoke to Anna Kate holding a cool towel to his cheek and Emma standing beside her. It hurt to move his jaw and his mouth tasted like metal and blood.

  “Yeah.” He looked around the kitchen. “Where’s your mom and dad?”

  “Mama’s not back yet. We don’t know where Daddy is. He comes and goes but he told us to stay here and let him know if you woke up. But we haven’t told him.”

  “Good.” He turned and spit a half-mouthful of blood that spattered onto the floor.

  “Gross!” Emma’s mouth twisted in disgust.

  “Listen to me. This is a dream, okay? I know that sounds strange, but you need to wake up, then you’ll know what I’m talking about. It’s easy. Just make yourself wake up.”

  The two girls looked at one another and then at him.

  “We can’t.”

  “Sure you can.”

  “We don’t want to hurt Daddy. He says if we do that then we won’t be able to see him anymore.”

  “Do you remember going to your dad’s funeral service?”

  They looked sad and nodded.

  “But he’s not dead anymore,” Emma said. “We changed that.”

  “Anna Kate. You know that people can’t come back to life, right? That’s impossible.”

  Layla’s eldest daughter looked at Emma, whose eyes begged her not to agree with him.

  “But he’s here. So—”

  “Sometimes after people pass on, they can appear in our dreams. It feels real and it’s even good to see them. But it can’t last. We have to let them move on. We have to move on.” He couldn’t believe he was quoting his mother’s wisdom, repeating words he had heard her say in her readings for other people. “We can’t live in the past, it just won’t work.”

  His eyes watered unexpectedly.

  “Are you hurting Mr. Mason?” Anna held the towel to his jaw again.

  “No, something just hit me—a mistake I should have seen a long time ago.”

  “I make mistakes all the time,” Emma said. “Anna Kate points most of them out to me.”

  Anna glared at her sister.

  “Think about your grandmother and how much you love her. Think about swimming with her again and how much fun y’all have together. If we stay in the past, here, then you won’t be able to see her again.”

  “We won’t?” Anna Kate asked.

  Emma turned pale and she lowered herself to the chair. “I don’t feel so good.”

  “What’s the matter, butterfly?” Asher said when he walked into the room.

  “I don’t know. I feel…tired and kind of spacey. Like I forgot to eat lunch.” She laid her head on the table. “Did we eat lunch, Anna Kate?”

  “We ate dinner. You ate to
o much cake, as usual. Then Grandma said we could lie down on those couches in the living room if we took our shoes off. And now we’re here. So it’s not really time for lunch, I guess. I’m getting confused. Seems like we ought to be asleep right now.”

  Asher wagged his finger at Mason. “Uh, uh, uh…” he sang.

  Mason glanced at the antique clock on the wall he’d never noticed before. They were running out of time and fast. He was pretty sure he could wake himself up, but he was only making slow progress with the girls.

  “Where’s Mama?” Emma asked. Her father stroked her hair and her eyes closed.

  “She’s coming.”

  “How do you know?” Anna asked.

  “I just saw her. She’s on her way.”

  36

  Layla had to settle herself three times before she could keep her eyes closed. She fretted about Jordan and how she sat in her car in front of the manor. Which made Layla get up from her meditation spot on the couch near Mason and her girls and look out the front window.

  There Jordan sat, the light of her phone occasionally illuminating her face. Layla wondered if she had already called police, was putting this play by play rescue of hers on her Facebook page, or was just talking to her dad, the mayor.

  Layla wiped the fresh blood from Mason’s mouth and covered her girls with an extra blanket, since she thought they felt cold to the touch.

  Now she just needed to drop herself into a deep enough level of meditation to reach that dream state. The blooms she had gathered for her family’s flower teas were safely stored in the kitchen. If all went as planned, those leaves would be waiting for her when she arrived. Hopefully this worked, hopefully this would soften Asher’s defenses enough that he would think she wanted them to be a family again. Hopefully.

  She breathed deeply for a while, focusing on the people who waited for her. When she heard Anna Kate’s voice, she opened her eyes. She was still on the couch, but the physical bodies of her loved ones were no longer there.